Old boats, I mean boats at least 40 or so years, historically had their heads on the port side. It was a tradition based on the fact that you could count on the head discharge thru hull coming out that side and therefore you always went swimming on the starboard side. A place like Great Salt Pond on Block Island, with a narrow inlet and hundreds of boats inside could get interesting on crowded occasions, such as the early Block Island race weeks or St Georges Harbor on Bermuda when the racing fleet was in with eight or more crew aboard each boat.

I'm glad that some of those problems have been rectified but I do pee over the side much of the time unless I am in a marina or in a very restricted harbor. And most people do too. And if I'm spending a day at the beach and there are no toilets handy I pee in the ocean there. Not in a lake or in a pool, but if I'm looking at three thousand miles of ocean to Europe, I do what come naturally. And I'm willing to bet most people reading this have done the same. I also fill the jug on my composting toilet when in restricted waters and dump it overboard when far enough offshore - sometimes my navigation is a little fuzzy about what three miles really is. Why, I think I even peed overboard when only two miles offshore.

I thought of the funnel to an unused thru hull idea myself. I remember an old two engine Navy prop cargo plane nicknamed the bugsmasher (I don't remember its proper name). They had just that system. You went aft and pulled a funnel connected to a hose out of a locker and peed into the air. That's about as bad as peeing in the water isn't it? I do think that peeing overboard in rough weather is unsafe so I'd like a funnel connected to the water so it can be used when bouncing around in the ocean, without filling up my jug, which can be messy to empty in rough weather. I haven't done it because I haven't figured out how to do it with adequate safety for water coming in, not pee going out.

A little common sense goes a long way. Don't tell me that peeing in water a mile off the beach is the same as peeing in your cockpit, that's nonsense. But don't tell me you secretly pump out at night in a crowded harbor, that's uncivil as well as blatantly illegal. As I said before, come on guys, a little common sense and sense of proportion.

The best and least expensive concept to clean up a stream is to require that a city's intake be located downstream of it's outflow. I think that the same concept could be employed with the urinal plumbing problem.

Thank-you PopeyeGordon! Well stated and we hope to the same on our boat. It saves a lot of space, and for the "black-water" ie sewage we will use a composting toilet.

In some of the bigger or longer races holding tank issues are a real issue. Here we have the LakeOntario 300. Imagine a boat of 8 people for 3 days on Lake Ontario without sewage discharges? How big a tank would you need? and how heavy would this be? If only every boat had a urinal!

T
In some of the bigger or longer races holding tank issues are a real issue. Here we have the LakeOntario 300. Imagine a boat of 8 people for 3 days on Lake Ontario without sewage discharges? How big a tank would you need? and how heavy would this be? If only every boat had a urinal!

... actually, the boat wouldn't be any heavier since you only converted water. Any liquid was already on the boat in plastic bottles or a fleshy biped, so if it is converted to urine, it's still on the boat but now in a holding tank. You may need a larger holding tank, but it wouldn't be any heavier.

a few years ago, I was talking to a marine police officer in Toronto. He told me that anywhere in the Toronto harbour (not just inner harbour, but Humber-to-Bluffs) they have to treat any dive like a contaminated dive site. Whether he was grandstanding or not, it seems plausible. After all, the sewage treatment plant dumps into the Humber river, and with anything but an east wind, you can see the current take it STRAIGHT to the inner harbour. A little boater urine is nothing in comparison.

By choosing to post the reply above you agree to the rules you agreed to when joining Sailnet.
Click Here to view those rules.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the SailNet Community forums, you must first register. Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.Please note: After entering 3 characters a list of Usernames already in use will appear and the list will disappear once a valid Username is entered.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

OR

Log-in

User Name

Password

Remember Me?

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.